~ The life of Katharine Susannah Prichard, the art of biography, and other things

Tag Archives: best

Unlike my antiquated novel list, these are films which were actually released in 2011.

10. Contagion –an effective, chilling account of the spread of a pandemic. Marks off for Jude Law’s annoying character.

9. I Love You Philip Morris – the most surprising film I saw all year; an offbeat, strange comedy about a man who keeps breaking out of prison.

8. True Grit – a Western by the Coen Brothers.

7. The Debt – stylish, quality thriller about the assassination of a concentration camp doctor.

6. Melancholia – a film I need to see again, but I don’t have the endurance required for it. The way von Trier shows the planet moving closer and closer until it engulfs the Earth is truly frightening. The whole film is disturbing.

5. Higher Ground – a woman begins to doubt the 1980s evangelical world she is immersed in. For anyone who knows the world and is willing to hold it up to the light, this will surely be engaging.

4. Black Swan – an intense thriller about an obsessive ballerina losing her grip on reality.

3. The Guard – black, black comedy about an Irish policeman with his own contrary code of honour. I laughed so hard at all the outrageous things he says and does.

2. Source Code – a man keeps up waking up inside someone else’s body in a train about to explode. A science fiction thriller which will probably come apart under scrutiny, but it gripped me like no other film this year.

1. Tree of Life – it’s difficult and sometimes boring, but it’s brilliant because it captures as much about the meaning of life as a film can hope to do. It also shows what it is to be a child, giving us an experience of life through a boy’s eyes.

Honourable mentions:

Ides of March – it really is very good and probably belongs in the top 10.

Voyage of the Dawntreader – far better than Prince Caspian, I enjoyed this Narnia film.

The ten novels I liked best in 2011, one of which was actually published in 2011.

10. The Summer That Never Was / Peter Robinson

Once or twice a year, I want to be comforted by crime fiction, by a detective who sets things right, and importantly, Robinson writes page-turning, well-plotted fiction about Inspector Banks without the cringeworthy prose of others I’ve tried.

9. The Bloodstone Papers / Glen Duncan

A sharply written novel about an Anglo-Indian man and the legacy of his parents. Duncan is one of those precious writers who get to the essence of things, his sentences giving frequent small thrills of insight.

8. The Historian / Elizabeth Kostova

Three generations of researchers at different times in the twentieth century search through archives across Europe for clues to the whereabouts of Dracula’s tomb. A bibliophilic thriller following its questers through ancient libraries and monasteries.

7. Due Preparations for the Plague / Jeanette Turner-Hospital

Years later, the events around the hijacking of a plane and the deaths of all the adults aboard still haunt the child survivors and relatives. It starts so well that I thought this would be a brilliant novel about living in the aftermath of grief; her prose is distinctive and her characters fascinating. Yet the novel falls apart in the second half, the worst section being an excruciatingly unrealistic transcript of the victims’ final speeches.

6. To Your Scattered Bodies Go / Philip Jose Farmer

The kind of science fiction I read as a teenager and I wish I still did more often. It is the first of the Riverworld sequence, as everyone who ever lives finds themselves resurrected in a strange world without explanation.

5. The Ghostwriter / John Harwood

A quaint and fascinating ghost story by the son of the poet Gwen Harwood. The prose is beautiful and the story a strange and unexpected one, as a shy librarian uncovers the truth about his mother’s past and his own mysterious penfriend.

4. Swann: A Mystery / Carol Shields

Swann is simultaneously a sharp satire and an engaging drama about the minor industry of publishers, tourism, and academics which springs up around the poems of an untalented murdered farmer’s wife.

3. The Stranger’s Child / Alan Hollinghurst

I read this novel twice because I’m discussing it in my dissertation, and it holds up well. The changing reactions to a minor war poet’s work over the century after World War One are used to create a novel of the changing fabric of British society and its attitude toward remembering and toward homosexuality. It’s a big novel and yet also an intimate one.

2. Runaway / Alice Munro

These stories were perfect, and moved me deeply, yet months on I can’t remember them clearly, which is why I can’t give the collection the top spot.

1. The Poisonwood Bible / Barbara Kingsolver

I haven’t even finished this book yet; I’m listening to it on tape and I’m not in the car alone enough over the holidays. But I have nearly finished it and I declare it to be brilliant: the story of the daughters and wife of a missionary in Congo in the late 1950s and the long shadow that time casts over the lives of these women. Kingsolver’s achievement is immense, narrating the novel with five distinct, compelling voices, creating characters I feel I know and love.

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